


You Need a Beta

by Kisuru



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 02:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5988643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kisuru/pseuds/Kisuru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s that time of the year again! The annual AO3 AllPairingsSwap for all fandoms has already gone through nominations and sign-ups are in full swing. For two months, all fanfiction exchange writers eagerly await what smutty goodness their writer has in store for their favorite characters. But this time, as the intimidated assigned writer finds out, not everything works out the way you pray it will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Need a Beta

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loveandthetruth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandthetruth/gifts).



March 26th, 2016

Finalizing a fic exchange sign-up was one of the most stressful processes Clive could think of. So much was yet to polish about his requests with all the meticulous details he could think of, but the sign-up deadline was only in about an hour at midnight UST. Then, he could kiss his chances of editing his requests goodbye.

“Most all of it is done,” Clive mumbled to himself. He twirled the pen between his fingers, a small tick he had developed long ago even while writing on his desktop. He frowned. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter in the end. You’re supposed to leave the rest to the imagination of the writer, and I’ve written enough to go overkill with.”

Clive examined his list of fandoms once again. He scrolled up and down the page of six necessary fandoms, ignoring the wall of black text that separated each pairing of characters and additional kinks. Hopefully, his assigned writer would not find him intimidating. Well, he was positive many people in these fandom found him a chore to write for. Last year, his writer had implied the same thing, and he had assured them that their story was a delight to read.

After all, not everyone could match his skill. No, he hardly was the best writer, but studying creative writing at university for as long as he had granted him some gloat to brag about even if that wasn’t his style.

Seeing one particular fandom on the list, Clive glanced at his BD/DVD tower in the corner. The dark black and red covers of the series Blood Wars stared at him from across the room, and he winced in memory. No, he had never finished the last few seasons of that series because the plot and actors were both dry and generic.

“I wonder if I should keep that last fandom in,” Clive murmured to himself. But he had asked for requests about the entire first season. He tapped his chin with the red ball of his pen. “Well, usually the fic authors write from the events of the second and the third.” He skimmed the content of his Dear AllPairingsSwap 2016 Letter again, pensive, and then shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. By the time the archive opens in two months, I’ll probably have watched the series.”

Knowing his busy schedule, he hardly would be able to watch another four seasons of an hour-long drama by that time. Honestly, that was how far he was in his backlog. But trying for a match with a rarer series would never hurt, especially when he had more popular series on his list that would likely be matched instead.

Clive clicked the form’s Submit and sat back in his chair, propping his head up on his arms. It was time to wait for AO3’s matching system to do its magic.

Everything would be a-okay.

March 31st, 2016

Standing on the street outside his apartment complex, Julius sifted through the email on his phone. The AO3 alert had popped out of nowhere, but he had expected it would arrive by the original assignments out date, April 1st. But he a day early was no really big deal.

No, at least that was not the big deal.

The big deal was the name written in the requests for his recipient: starwarsforever

It was not a creative name, but . . . Well, he could hardly be some big-shot, so maybe this story would not be so difficult to write after all. Though he usually wasn’t so thorough, Julius clicked on the name and ended up on the profile. He scanned the page and, in shock, stared at the number of comments and kudos on the stories there.

One of the stories freakin’ had 300 kudos and 1000 comments! Getting kudos and comments on AO3 was difficult enough, but Julius was terrified enough just to check the numbers on the guy’s other fics, the numbers only increasing and increasing.

Damn, that was one of the best writers in about two other fandoms he was in, now that he noticed the fandoms. No, scratch that, his fingers typed magic and pure skill whenever they went, and he could not believe his eyes that he was paired with him.

A 1,000 word story suddenly felt a lot more taxing and impossible if he had to impress this guy. And him, a guy that barely had any kudos and reviews on his stories to begin with. Most of them had even come from his friends being nice for his sake.  
  
Searching through the list of fandoms for the one he could write for, he spotted Blood Wars at the bottom. He could do that one without any trouble; he knew all the characters and plotlines, and it had even become his fall favorite series of the previous year. That would be a perfect match if he could actually manage to impress starwarsforever.

Julius glanced at the balcony of his window so high up the building, and winced.

Yes, he better start on that story as early as possible or else he would fall skid right on his ass and make a fool out of him himself. Except for the fact that he was the world’s worst procrastinator, this might actually work out if he typed the damn story.

April 30th, 2016  
  
Bleary-eyed, Julius stared at the lone word typed on his Microsoft Word’s mostly blank slate of a document. Only one word. One tiny word he had written in the past half of the month, and he could have done anything better than one little article.

“The” stared back at Julius mockingly from his laptop screen, taunting him to continue.

This was ridiculous. He had to go to work in the morning, and he still was staring at this after two hours in dumbstruck anxiety.

“Forget it.” Julius pulled his hands from his hair, slowly patting down the strands he had ruffled while throwing himself into despair. He could do this, he was not that lazy. Sure he had a dead end job, and maybe his college grades had been sub-par when he had graduated a few years ago, but. . . .

“I’ll check the assignments page again,” Julius said hopefully, just too cheerfully that it was artificial. He found the Assignments link on his task bar and clicked on it.

The sight that met his eyes was for sore eyes; an entire column of text flooded his vision, and he was horrified to skim down it, picking out little details in the paragraphs as he went along. Certainly he was not obligated to write everything that his recipient wanted, but still, he was that kind of guy to include everything possible.

Julius leaned over his desk and clutched at his hair, rubbing at his bloodshot eyes. He had to be daydreaming this nightmare. He had to be daydreaming that his starwarsforever had essentially written him an entire love letter about his sexual fantasies; Julius could not understand why this was just the best thing he had ever read in his entire life somehow.

Julius breathed deeply, looking through his fingers at the blurry, glowing laptop screen in front of him with a mixture trepidation and anticipation. “I think this will be the longest Dear Writer Letter I’ll ever have to read, and I’ll always hate this one the most.”

May 25th, 2016

_11:55 p.m. 11:56 p.m. 11…_

Time was nearing for his story’s debut. It was almost toast. Burned, stomped on toast. But he had worked tirelessly on the story until the last minute. It had not helped him that he had goofed off on the assignment for the past two months, but he hoped what he had accomplished would suffice.

The AO3 archive was about to go live. There was nothing more nerve-racking than having a fic viewed for the first time. That first person could have been anyone from a random viewer skimming the archive to your own recipient—the person he had been waiting for, in other words.

Being nervous was unavoidable considering this was his first fic exchange. And, well, he was not the most prominent writer in the fandom, and his works were usually ignored in the first place. Maybe with just a little luck nobody would notice that this work was his and would click and leave at least a one-line review.

Julius bit into the sandwich in his hand. He had been reviewing his story down to the wire, and he fingers felt sweaty on the rough bread edges. He glanced at the computer clock with a mixture of and apprehension, heartbeat skyrocketing.

It did not help when your recipient was one the prominent writers in the entire fandom. That left a little pressure surging through his gut, and he knew that there was no way in which he could take back fic blunder, even as an anonymous writer, if he failed here.

The last thing he wanted to do was fall flat on his face in front of such a good writer.

_12:00 a.m._

Julius’s fingertips danced over the mouse pad of his laptop and shifted closer to his screen. Now or never, he would have to face the music for his work whether or not it turned out to be a success. He refreshed the page. Just as he thought, the stories needed a moment to load. Somehow this eased his nerves on a small scale. Another minute, and another refresh later, Julius found himself idly reading the fic summary for his own gift before checking the Statistics page for any views.

Battle Infinity  
To Death (3,999 words)  
Hits: 1 Kudos: 0 Comment Threads: 0 Bookmarks: 0

Julius blinked at the lonesome number, first in shock then in confusion that he was noticed already. For somebody to have looked at his gift already… He was exactly how he had always seemed with his fic updates, precise and timely on the dot with the date he had set. He had expected this, but he still could only stare at the screen and refresh.  
  


* * *

Stories were about to revealed. Clive was always interested in the types of stories people wrote for him, but he had not really been able to narrow down, based on the tags in the archive, which fandom his story was supposed to be in. He really did not care too much, except—he thought back to his sign-up and recalled the eyesore that was Blood Wars and shivered. No, he still had not watched the entire last few seasons of that series. The probability of receiving that fandom was higher because there were five stories total in the section, but still he was absolutely sure about his observation.

Once midnight struck, he hovered over to the Gifts section. Sure enough, there was a Blood Wars story there. Of course it was the story he was least prepared for. That logic of the universe of the universe never failed him. Clive squinted at the pairing in the tags. No, those two were not even in the first season, and this was Not Good.

Maybe he could bluff his way through this. It would be horrible to his writer, but he really had no choice, and he always reviewed.

Clicking on the story anyway, Clive began to skim. And he noticed it right away. The formatting, the list of spelling and grammatical errors, and even the lack of punctuation in a few sections . . . He was appalled that this person had not recruited a beta if his English this this lacking. Still, something about the prose rang true to Clive, the word choices right on the mark and tasteful in many of the sentences that spoke of originality and raw, heartfelt emotion few writers could hope to achieve; it was a feeling that made the heart want to grow closer to whoever could write such beautiful descriptions about love and hope. The story had a happy ending despite some angst, and he was thankful that his recipient had at least attention to that Do Want on his Dear AllPairingsSwap 2016 Letter.

“Even though I’m so busy,” Clive wondered aloud softly, leaning back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling, “maybe I could make a little extra time to help this guy—or woman, who knows but it sounds like a guy—out after reveals if they want my help.”

Thinking anyone wanted his help specifically was pretentious. He could admit that much about himself, maybe. Yet, there was no mistaking that the story’s message had persuaded him by the heart and the mind to learn more about the person sporting the Anonymous name, and a true writer was someone he wanted to talk to.  
  


* * *

It took at least an hour for the review to roll in. By then he had all but given up on hope he had receive anything before the morning. Not even the guy’s Twitter was updating to talk about his gift; usually, he updated his Twitter around this time with some goodnight message to his followers. Julius had been stalking his account for too long, he decided with a firm shake of his head.

But this time, when he refreshed the page, he found that the comments bar read one whole new comment had been posted.

Hand shaking slightly, he pushed the page down to the bottom and clicked on the little comment bar. To his disappointment, he only saw a line of text, and it was a very vague one about the characters at that considering all his story had contained.

_This was a great work. I enjoyed how you portrayed Chloe and Michael. Thank you!_

That was it? That was all he got in feedback? Okay, okay, maybe it could have been worse. It did not really mention any of the plot, or the kinks he had used, or much of anything really… but it was at least positive in tone rather than annoyed, which in itself was not too much to celebrate over. Fic exchange comments were always supposed to be uplifting. It was still a little disappointing nonetheless.

“I guess I failed after all,” Julius sighed. All the enthusiasm in his veins seemed to rush away like the sand in the ocean, the last remnants of his excitement filtered out. He would just answer in the morning.

Julius feel asleep right then and there, stretched out under his blanket with his head lolled on the keyboard.

Waking up bleary-eyed, he frowned at the laptop. Oh, right—last night had turned into a disaster. Well, he better check his story again. After botting up the computer, Julius tapped to the little refresh icon and waited as the page reloaded. It still read that there was one comment, but this time…

This time when Julius checked the comment just to make sure he had not dreamt his crushing disappointment, there was a longer message attached. He frowned and squinted at the message in disblief, urging himself to wake up.

_I’m sorry, I would have left a longer review, but I actually haven’t watched the season that these characters were from. I know it’s my gift, and I know I shouldn’t have asked for a series I haven’t seen fully, but as soon as I finish watching the season I have on my shelf I’ll leave you a better review. Again, this is my fault, and until then, I apologize!_

_I hope this doesn’t sound forward or rude of me, but one day after reveals if you’d let me, I’d like to help beta for you because I liked your ideas so much! If not, I understand, but for now the offer stands!_

Julius stared slack-jawed at that last comment. For such a good writer to want to beta his work… What universe was this? To ask for a fandom that he had not even seen fully… Even one of his favorite authors made a big blunder like that, and he had even admitted it publicly. The guy had even asked to be his beta which was another whole orbital amazement. He might not have if AO3 had a private messaging feature, but Julius could hardly believe he had gotten such an answer in the first place.

Well, there was only one thing to do in this situation. In fact, it was the only very important question to ask.

Despite his exhaustion, his adrenaline pumped from just the thought, the smallest idea that he may get to spend time with one of his favorite authors was an astonishment he would not pass up in a million years.

_Thanks for the comment, I understand._

_I have the series on BD. I saw that you have Twitter, would you want to watch it sometime soon and live-tweet it at the same time after I’m revealed?_

_And I really wouldn’t mind if you helped beta for me… I know I’m not the greatest writer around here on AO3, and I felt anxiety even writing this story._

Now it was time to wait. After all, it was very forward of him in the first place to ask for something like that, a date even, but he could definitely live with a date to plan for with one of his favorite writers.


End file.
